Greening Asia: Emerging Principles of Sustainable Architecture Reports on over 30 recent projects in Asia that go beyond Green. From these the author extracts six principles for sustainable design that are Asia-centric and scalable. In the first one-third of the book, Green buildings in Asia are examined against figures on rising consumption and worsening environmental track record. Arising from this critique – and an examination of what is defined as a Green building today – six principles are proposed as a way of moving the industry towards sustainable development. These are illustrated with nineteen projects in Asia.

In the following two-thirds of the book, another twelve in-depth case studies are used to illustrate how these six principles might be integrated at the drawing board and what this might mean to performance. Many of these projects are by well-known and forward-thinking designers such as Woha (Singapore), Morphogenisis (India) and Stephen Holl (USA). They illustrate different building typologies, policy agendas and socio-economic constraints.

This publication has 334 pages with over 200 drawings and 330 photographs; projects featured are from Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. The central argument of this book is that despite the current trend to embrace Green, an urgent rethink is needed in the way that Asia builds. The hard truth about Green buildings today is that they are products of fragmented and cautious approach. They do not do enough to mitigate impact nor do the conventions of Greening address the diverse needs of the region and its people. Asia must get past the current market-driven approach towards a meaningful roadmap of sustainability.

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Dr Nirmal Kishnani is an educator, researcher and consultant. He has been an advocate and expert in Green design in Asia for over 15 years, sitting on several advisory panels in China, Singapore and Vietnam that have shaped projects and policies. He is at present with the National University of Singapore where he teaches sustainability at the School of Design and Environment and is programme director of its Masters in Integrated Sustainable Design. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the FuturArc magazine and resident jury chair of two Asia-based design competitions: the FuturArc Prize and the FuturArc Green Leadership Award.